LIB DEM
By Mathew Hulbert
I came away from Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton with one question ringing louder than any other: what are the Liberal Democrats for?
A week later, I’m afraid Ed Davey has done little to provide an answer.
His response to Andy Burnham’s Labour Conference speech - particularly on the pensions triple lock and social care - was not merely politically misjudged. It felt petulant: opposition for opposition’s sake when what was required was serious engagement with a serious proposal.
Burnham has proposed keeping the triple lock for the rest of this Parliament before reforming it from 2030, with savings helping fund a National Care Service.
Davey immediately attacked the proposal. Yet two of his own MPs, Tom Gordon and Vikki Slade, publicly challenged his reaction. Gordon said Davey had “missed the point”, while Slade argued that pensioners could benefit more from free social care than from retaining the earnings element of the triple lock.
They are right to raise those questions.
Social care is one of the great unresolved scandals of British politics. I have spent years campaigning on emergency healthcare and arguing that you simply cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care. If Labour is prepared to be radical on this, Liberal Democrats should engage constructively - not instinctively reach for a press release attacking it.
More troublingly for Davey, Sky News reported wider unhappiness among his MPs, including claims that most of the parliamentary party wanted to support Burnham’s proposal.
This matters because it comes after a lacklustre period of leadership in which the party has seemed increasingly unsure of its purpose.
Brighton was wonderful. I loved seeing friends and colleagues. But beneath the warmth and optimism, I sensed a party still searching for its political direction.
The magnificent 72-seat breakthrough of 2024 should have been a springboard. Instead, we risk allowing it to become the high-water mark.
Liberalism cannot simply mean opposing Labour on Monday, attacking the Conservatives on Tuesday and producing a clever stunt on Wednesday.
We should know what we stand for: electoral reform, rebuilding our relationship with Europe, defending human rights, tackling inequality, properly funding public services and transferring power away from Westminster and into communities.
And we should have a leader capable of making that case with passion and clarity.
Increasingly, Liberal Democrats are privately - and now sometimes publicly - asking whether Ed Davey is still that leader. Inevitably, that means people are also beginning to ask who might eventually succeed him.
There may be no leadership contest around the corner. But leadership speculation rarely begins with a formal declaration.
It begins with doubt.
After Brighton, I had doubts about our direction.
After this week, I suspect rather more Liberal Democrats do too.
